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Battle Report: Chaos Space Marines vs Astra Militarum

Wednesday night I played a 1,650 Warhammer 40K game with my Chaos Space Marines, the Disciples of Twilight, against Astra Militarum. I ran the same list as the week prior in preparation for a tournament in November. That list was:

Fast Attack

Heavy Support

We rolled up the Deadlock mission for Maelstrom of War where you start with six cards and decrease each turn. I got side choice and first turn.

The arrows show my planned attack routes.Better shot of the Astra Militarum deployment.

The Game

This will be a quick report. The game ended up being very one-sided and my opponent called it at the top of turn #4 where I had an 8-4 lead and he wasn’t going to be able to climb back into the game at that point. If you look at that first shot you will see my planned attack approach and it pretty much went as planned. I advanced along those routes relatively unscathed and was able to get into his lines quickly. He did not have any good firing lanes and the terrain covered my approach really well. I think if he was more aggressive with the Knight Titan, I had little to deal with it on that side, he could have stayed in the game. Getting that Knight into combat and then stomping out would have gone a long way. However, he held it back until the end and by then it was just too late. I felt bad about the outcome of the game but it was still a fun game. Here’s some cool action shots during the game.

A look up field.

That Leman Russ is going to die.

It’s crumping time!

Advancing on the right flank.

Ghostwrath lands to terrify some Guardsmen.

Spawn prepare to dive into the blob.

Heldrake flew over the Vendetta to vector strike it.

Wrap-up

The more I use this list the more I enjoy it. I know it’s not really competitive, it’s far from a well rounded list, but it suits me and I have fun with it and ultimately that’s all I care about. I’m really getting to like Huron as well. The infiltration warlord trait has been great and helps offset some of my lists weaknesses. Huron has also been a solid support character as well where he generates one psychic power a turn. Normally I end up with some great support powers and he keeps my Obliterators fearless and they serve as a great bodyguard. Do you folks like these type of action shots? I think they’re cool and help put you into the game but I’m open to suggestions.

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I love love action shots. The whole point of the hobby is those glorious moments when the two armies are clashing with one another. Though you get a better idea of how the game is playing with the overhead shots, nothing says 40k better then those action shots.

How’d the daemon prince do vs the knight? Reece had one wipe out two knights in a single turn. He blew up the first knight, which scattered onto the second, and he rolled a 6 on the destroyer chart. BOOM!

Yeah, hitting on 3’s but I had to smash to be able to hurt it and one smash attack is rough.

TheRhino

Knights are a funny unit. From the batreps I’ve seen here and there, when folks run one, they either go balls-out with it, or hold back and use it sparingly. I know the psychology of fielding one would be tough for me. “Hey, here’s this HUGE model I spent ages painting and that makes up a big part of my army. What’s that? You blew it up on Turn Two with a tri-Las Predator? Take it off the table? CRAAAP!”

I see its use the same way I see a Defiler’s use. Spend a few turns advancing up and pounding the enemy with fire power and then jump into the fray. Exclusively hanging back to shoot or just running forward to dive into combat is too limiting and you’ll hardly get your value out of it.

TheRhino

True. I think a lot of their utility comes in the form of the mobility of being a superheavy walker. 12″ moves are huge. Seems like a Knight could single handedly take apart armies that don’t have the anti-tank firepower to stop them reliably, or those that are deployed poorly. If you have all your antitank on one flank, the Knight can crush the opposite flank. If you thin your firepower across your line, you might not get enough solid shots through to bother it.

Agreed. I had very little shooting to threaten the Knight and nothing that could handle it in close combat. If my opponent recognized that early on then he would have made my life miserable. It’s like any unit you field, you have to play it to its strengths against THAT opponent.

JD Brink

Great pics. Looking at the Impie line-up I thought you might be in trouble — a lot of armor in there. But sounds like you handled it well. And I really like the spawn shot — those models are great.

Damn, you’re making miss my models, especially chaos!! I did ship my eldar to Japan but all our stuff is still a month away. I’m going to miss my chaos forces though, which went into storage for 3 years! DAMMIT!!!!

Normally armor can give me issues but he had to be rather aggressive with it this game to get it somewhere useful. That terrain didn’t lend itself to sit back and shoot so when it came to me I just tackled it.

I love my Spawn and Chaos in general. Three years is a damn long time to not have yours! By the time you get to play them again there will be a new codex :)

It’s a brief batrep but good. It doesn’t sound like there was a lot to analyze in this game anyway so there isn’t much need for your usual detail here.

Great job on the photos. The two deployment shots do a good job of showing the terrain layout and how the armies were set up. The action shots are a lot of fun to look at and do a great job of highlighting the visual aspect that draws many of us into the game. For me the best batreps have a balance of wide shots to demonstrate the flow and action shots to spice things up. You’ve nailed that balance here.

Yeah, sadly it was a very one-sided game so no in depth tactical analysis needed.

Glad to see I’m honing in on a good mix of shots. Now to keep remembering to take them each time I play.

Author

Thor

I began playing Warhammer 40K in 2006, and have been an avid player and hobbyist since then. I have also been blogging about 40K for almost as long as I've been playing it, having started Creative Twilight in 2009.

I own Orks, Necrons, Space Marines, and Chaos Space Marines. However, Chaos is the only army I'm actively playing, as I just love the background and the character of the army.

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About Creative Twilight

Creative Twilight is a wargaming/gaming blog focused on the hobby of Warhammer 40K, Age of Sigmar, Warmachine/Hordes, Blood Bowl and more. We are always sharing our work, whether that's painting, sculpting, modeling, whatever. Our goal is to also provide useful tutorials, so you will find plenty of those here as well. In short, we're a bunch of guys who love the hobby, and simply enjoy talking about it.